


naturally, we acted

by elizabethelizabeth



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/F, Ineffable Wives (Good Omens), Ireland, Music, She/Her Pronouns for Aziraphale (Good Omens), She/Her Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens), The Bentley Ships It (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22884736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizabethelizabeth/pseuds/elizabethelizabeth
Summary: Demonic ownership aside, the Bentley has a willful mind of her own, and it's about to drive Crowleyabsolutely bonkers.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 83





	naturally, we acted

The Bentley discovered Irish drinking songs not by accident, but Crowley wished it had been so. Butterfly effected, there were so many choices Crowley made in 1969 that she could have simply avoided making, but if she was anything, she was predictable. 

The whole thing began because Aziraphale could not, under any circumstances, go to Dublin that summer.

“Aziraphale, I’m serious. I’ll take this one.”

Aziraphale didn’t look at her, instead chose to reshelve a copy of Lawrence’s _Women in Love_ , regard it with a glare, take it down, and reshelve it somewhere else. While accomplishing nothing, she said “You went to Morocco for us last month. It’s no trouble at all for me to take this one.”

“Let’s toss for it.” Crowley had already manifested a fifty pence coin from her pocket, ready to flip it in her favor.

Aziraphale huffed, turned the glare towards Crowley and softened it simultaneously. “I know you cheat at the coin tosses, dear.”

“You’ll cheat if I allow you to toss it.”

The glare frosted over again. “I’m an angel, I’d do no such thing.”

Crowley was used to the angel’s lies. Lies, to Crowley, had always tasted sour and dry, like a tannin-heavy wine sat for too long in the sun. Did lying taste the same in Aziraphale’s mouth? The angel was so sensitive to flavors and too prone to show her reactions obviously. When Aziraphale did lie, it was obvious by her eye-shift and lip-pucker. She lied often, but she was terrible at it. It was not a skill perfected by practice. 

Of course, Crowley only recently discovered the particulars of Aziraphale’s tells. It hadn’t been obvious until Aziraphale handed over a tartan thermos and hid her terrified eyes and lied about Crowley going too fast.

Ever since then, Crowley had been uncomfortably aware of how often Aziraphale scrubbed the truth to a false shine.

“Gabriel deigned to visit me personally to give me this assignment.” Aziraphale switched tactics because that was the truth. “I was worried at first, that he’d caught on to our Arrangement, but not so. It seems the situation in Northern Ireland is —”

“Fuck!” Crowley interrupted and paced away from Aziraphale so she could hide in another aisle. So, the angel knew. That put a bit of a kink into Crowley’s plans. “So you know?”

“I’m not oblivious, Crowley,” and, no, Aziraphale wasn’t that. She had a keen mind and an eye for details and minutiae. She wasn’t stupid or idiotic, only played at being daft when it suited her, and it rarely suited her. “There’s...dissent growing.”

“You could call it that, yeah,” Crowley spat out, furiously reshelving a copy of Austen’s _Northanger Abbey_ in a manner entirely unlike Aziraphale’s reshelving. Aziraphale’s organization systems existed entirely to cause chaos and irritation so that no one could ever find the book they were searching for. Crowley reshelved them to make books easier for patrons to find. And to annoy Aziraphale. “Dissent. They’re killing each other in the streets, angel. Hawking tear gas and bombs at each other, and all in the name of—”

“Crowley!” 

Crowley flinched at her name, not often uttered by Aziraphale. Crowley’s name from angelic lips was a word uttered times few and far between. 

She had the sudden urge to topple the shelves, push the stacks out of her way, use the last of her Samson strength to see Aziraphale’s Delilah-desperate expression. A downfall. Instead, she grasped the shelves, leant her full weight on them to test their stability. She hoped the shelves were stronger than her will.

“What, angel? Don’t want to face the fact that a holy war is raging across the sea? Or were you going to ask if it was my fault?”

“I wasn’t going to do that.”

Aziraphale was beside Crowley so instantaneously that Crowley almost jumped at the suddenness. Crowley tilted her head enough so she could regard Aziraphale in her periphery and still hide her eyes behind her lenses. “You thought about it, though.”

“I didn’t.”

Amazingly, Aziraphale wasn’t lying. 

There had to be a change of subject, otherwise, Crowley would lose all her composure and say something embarrassing about how she shouldn’t have underestimated the angel or how upsetting it was to see her so forlorn in the stacks of the bookshop and lit by the low lighting. “What did Gabriel say?”

Aziraphale didn’t roll her eyes, but it looked like a near thing. “Apparently, I’m being sent for a blessing of a baby. That’s it. I was told not to interfere with ‘political affairs.’” She didn’t physically add air quotes, but Crowley could sense them all the same. She invented the concept, after all. “And you?”

“Temptation. Apolitical. I was told not to interfere either, but that’s by design, I think. Humans inventing reasons to kill each other in the Almighty’s name? Downstairs likes to sit back and watch anytime that happens.” That had been true throughout all of her and Aziraphale’s time on Earth: crusades, bellum justum, dharamyudh. There were countless examples of violence explained away by divine right. Crowley had received commendations for a few of them.

Not this one, though.

“Why didn’t you want me to go?” Aziraphale asked, softly. 

“It’s not safe, angel.” It was times such as these where Crowley felt duplicitously torn; she wanted to hide herself and hold Aziraphale all at once. “I didn’t want you to get caught up in the middle of it.” It was a risk, telling Aziraphale that. Crowley so rarely let down her guard, exposed her heart and its inner workings that ran like clockwork to Aziraphale’s insistences and wants. 

“You must know I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” Aziraphale reached across Crowley to re-reshelve the book Crowley had placed correctly. Aziraphale didn’t immediately pull back; instead, she laid her hand to rest on Crowley’s clenched knuckles. “You don’t need to worry.”

Like that was ever going to stop Crowley.

“You can take care of all my assignments for the rest of the year, Aziraphale. I’ll cheat at every coin toss to make sure of it. Just...let me go to Dublin,” Crowley said, fighting back an undemonic urge to add let me help you.

Crowley didn’t look at Aziraphale, but she saw the angel’s smile in her periphery and knew that the angel would agree.

Two nights later, on a hot August night, Crowley parked the Bentley next to the smoking ruins of a house and the smoky air of a pub.

The jobs, hers and Aziraphale’s both, had been painfully easy. Subtle snaps of fingers and some intentional thoughts was all it took. No zing or panache, which Crowley tried not to be upset at.

The job was done, and it was time to head home, but Crowley wanted a drink first.

She wanted the driest Irish stout served from the grimiest tap in the most water-stained glass in Dublin, which wasn’t hard to find. It was harder finding a pub that hadn’t been decimated in the destruction deemed worthy by human hubris.

If Crowley received a commendation for this shite, she would...well, there wasn’t a whole lot she could conceivably do. Couldn’t quit working for Hell, could she? Or take early retirement? Fucking ridiculous.

The stout was dry and the music was lively and the floors were sticky. The patrons, soot-saturated and somber, listened to the twanging of a fiddle and a crooner’s lilting voice. 

“I wish, I wish, I wish in vain. I wish I was a youth again, but a youth again I can never be til’ apples grow on an ivy tree”

Despite the pomaceous lyrics, the whole scene together calmed Crowley’s nerves enough that she felt capable of driving back to London that evening.

It wasn’t until Crowley was on the ferry crossing the Irish Sea with the smoking landscape of Dublin in the rearview mirror, thinking of Aziraphale and grateful that she had successfully convinced her to stay home, that Crowley realized the music from the pub hadn’t stopped.

The Bentley, up to that point, had decided to play a mixture of hard rock and whatever French ye-ye pop music she could pick up on radio waves from across the channel. Crowley had grown so used to the eclectic mix that it was little more than background music to whatever dastardly demonic doings Crowley got up to. The Who gave the mood melancholy tones, and France Gall made Crowley feel like a femme fatale in a spy film that got shit done, so she didn’t complain. 

The Irish pub songs, though? With their self-reflective lyricism and sorrowful string-plucking?

I LEFT ALL ME FRIENDS AND ME OWN RELIGION, I LEFT THEM ALL FOR TO FOLLOW YOU! BUT THE SWEETEST APPLE IS THE SOONEST ROTTEN, AND THE HOTTEST LOVE IS THE SOONEST COLD!

“Is this your idea of a joke?” Crowley asked the leather interior and demonically upgraded sound system. “Forty years,” she bemoaned. “Forty years I’ve had you and you choose now to get a sense of humor? I thought the Elvis phase was bad.”

AND WHAT CAN'T BE CURED, LOVE, HAS TO BE ENDURED, LOVE

“I’m not going to wax you for a week after we get back.”

The music did not stop; it taunted Crowley with apples and forlorn love. She had every opportunity to turn off the radio, either humanly or demonically, but the fact of the matter was that it never crossed her mind. 

OH LOVE IS PLEASIN' AND LOVE IS TEASIN'! AND LOVE IS A PLEASURE WHEN FIRST IT'S NEW!

“That’s just cruel,” Crowley muttered, crossing her arms and staring out the window at the black-green sea growing steadily darker with the setting sun behind her.

It continued like this for years.

In 1970 the Bentley discovered Queen, so Crowley’s assignments sometimes were given in Freddie Mercury’s voice rather than Elvis Presley’s. The Irish folk songs weren’t incessant, obviously not a fixation of the Bentley’s, and Crowley was a little grateful for that, as much as a demon could experience gratitude, which in Crowley’s case was a lot and often when the time called for it. It was a rare occasion for the Bentley to play fiddles and folk songs, but it was just rare enough for Crowley to notice it every someone-damned time.

To notice a pattern.

Like how, in 1988, Crowley drove home to her flat from Aziraphale’s bookshop, giddy-drunk and still giggling after recalling a time in Greece where they both had been attempting to perform miracles on the same lad, apparently destined for both the third circle of Hell and sainthood due to a paperwork mixup. They’d both been furious at the time, of course, but their post-Arrangement hindsight made instances such as those more hilarious. 

Crowley was recalling, fondly and flushed, the way Aziraphale’s hand lingered on Crowley’s arm as they laughed.

CASTING OUT MY SWEET LINE WITH ABANDONMENT AND LOVE! NO CEILING BEARIN’ DOWN ON ME 'CEPT THE STARRY SKY ABOVE 

“It’s not like that,” Crowley muttered angrily, all of her good feelings gone, banished along with her drunkenness. “That’s not—”

WITH LIGHT IN MY HEAD! YOU IN MY ARMS! WOO!

“I’m leaving you in a parking lot in Bath. See how you like saltwater thrown on you constantly, eh? You’ll be a rusty bucket within two days, minimum.”

There was a—frankly fantastic—fiddle solo orchestrating Crowley’s rant, which made her feel very cool and very angry.

The Bentley was dissimilar to Crowley’s plant collection in that she did not succumb and bow down to Crowley’s anger. If anything, the Bentley thrived on Crowley’s annoyance, and sought over the years to incite the irritation. Crowley, for the demonic life of her, couldn’t figure out what the _fuck_ her car’s deal was. It behaved normally in every other circumstance, as much as a demonically enhanced Bentley in the companionship of a demon could be normal. The Bentley never ran out of petrol, required washing and waxing once a month, and played a steady soundtrack of Queen songs regardless of what cassette or CD was in her sound system.

And then...Crowley would leave Aziraphale’s bookshop, or drop Aziraphale off at some location or another, or even be _thinking_ of Aziraphale after passing by a bakery and resolving to take Aziraphale there sometime in the future. Over and over, every time this happened after Crowley returned from Dublin, the Bentley would serenade her one passenger with lovelorn melodies. Fiddles and banjos and mandolins— the multitudes of string instruments that Crowley thought was musical overkill. All she had to do was _think_ of Aziraphale in a too-familiar way, and the Gaelic lyrical insistence would take over whatever Freddie Mercury was crooning about.

It was getting ridiculous.

And it didn’t stop after Armageddon. Or, rather, the Overwhelming Lack of Armageddon.

Because after they were fired/retired from their respective sides, Crowley suddenly had a lot more unstructured time to spend with Aziraphale without any threats of discorporation or being-found-out hanging over the pair of them. It was great. Brilliant, really. Crowley was fortunate enough to witness the tension in Aziraphale’s shoulders slowly dissipate, for her smile to regain its warmth bereft of apocalyptic anxiety. Crowley was still a mess of nerves as a general rule, but it was nice to enjoy Aziraphale’s company just because she could and wanted to.

That’s all it was. Company.

Crowley dropped Aziraphale off at the bookshop one night in the autumn after that almost-disastrous summer, kept the windows rolled down as she watched as the angel made her way slowly across the pavement. She was a testament to tweed, blond curls cut short, but left long enough to halo her face. Crowley likened the sound of Aziraphale’s brown brogues hitting the asphalt to a drum-beat of unrequited desire.

Aziraphale looked back, once, before she shut the door to the bookshop. The lights from the bar across the street cast her in red light. Combined with the bookshop’s interior, golden glow, the angel looked aflame. It made Crowley’s heart seize up in familiarly uncomfortable terror, but it passed quickly. Aziraphale smiled before she disappeared inside.

Fuck, Crowley was proper in love, wasn’t she?

Crowley sighed, nervously and heavily, and rested her head on the Bentley’s steering wheel. With a lazy wave of her arm, the car rumbled awake and, with it, so did its stereo system.

BUT I’M IN SO DEEP! YOU KNOW I’M SUCH A FOOL FOR YOU! YOU’VE GOT ME WRAPPED AROUND YOUR FINGER, UH HUH. DO YOU HAVE TO LET IT LINGER? DO YOU HAVE TO? DO YOU HAVE TO? DO YOU HAVE–

“Fuck you,” Crowley murmured, and muted the volume with a too-harsh button press. The Bentley righteously reacted by stalling for a moment as Crowley attempted to drive away. “How do you even _know_ The Cranberries? I’ve never even played them in here.”

The Bentley responded by starting the music again, a different song this time.

I DON'T KNOW WHY BUT SUDDENLY I'M FALLING! I WAS SO BLIND! I WAS LOVING YOU ALL THE TIME! AND NOW I'M HOPELESSLY ADDICTED, HELPLESSLY ATTRACTED, CHEMICALLY REACTED!

“Oh, really?” Crowley glared at the volume button as she twisted it, but it was unresponsive. “You think it’s that easy? You think you can play some...some _sappy_ Irish folk, and I’ll just, what, go tell Aziraphale how I feel? You think you playing this is going to make me go all sentimental and... _soft?_ You really think any of this interference is going to make me worthy of Aziraphale?”

“Oh, _Crowley.”_

Crowley froze. Maybe if she stayed perfectly still, blended in with the Bentley’s black leather interior, Aziraphale wouldn’t notice Crowley had been talking nonsense at her car’s stereo. But Crowley was not a serpent camouflaged in a forest, and Aziraphale was far more perceptive than any creature that might be scared away from Crowley’s false ferocity. 

“Angel.” Maybe if Crowley feigned dumb, Aziraphale would lose interest and forget that she’d heard Crowley make an absolute fool of herself by confessing her feelings to the backdrop of...whatever Irish band the Bentley was playing, Crowley didn’t actually recognize it. Was the Bentley going through Spotify and playing random songs from someone’s 90s Irish Folk-Rock Bands playlist[1]? “Did you, er...have you been there long?”

“Darling.”

Crowley tried, she really did try, not to melt at Aziraphale’s endearment for her.

In fact, she almost laughed it off; she got as far as opening her mouth to excuse and diminish whatever was about to happen when the Bentley started playing Sinead O’Connor’s cover of “Nothing Compares 2 U” and that was officially Crowley’s limit. “Hold on,” she said to Aziraphale, who looked very much like she was trying not to laugh. Crowley faced the steering wheel again. “Fine. You win.” Immediately, the music stopped. “I’ll quit being an idiot.”

Crowley took her time getting out of the car, not wanting to trip over her feet and make a fool of herself, not that she hadn’t been making a fool of herself in front of the angel for millennia.

The Bentley behaved herself as Crowley and Aziraphale talked softly on the pavement in front of A. Z. Fell & Co. She thought about playing some Enya or Clannad as Aziraphale grinned and wrapped her arms around Crowley, kissing her enthusiastically and fiercely. Crowley responded in kind and nearly lifted the angel off the ground in her excitement.

The Bentley went back to looping Queen after that incident.

### Footnotes

1. That’s exactly what the Bentley was doing, but Crowley didn’t need to know that. return to text 

**Author's Note:**

> songs used and mentioned in this fic are:  
> Dubliners "Love is Pleasing"  
> The Waterboys "Fisherman's Blues"  
> The Cranberries "Linger"  
> The Corrs "Hopelessly Addicted"
> 
> Did I want to use SO MANY MORE Irish folk artists? Yes. Could I resist adding an Enya joke? No. Is this completely self-indulgent? Perhaps, but such is fic life.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] naturally we acted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29372418) by [semperfiona_podfic (semperfiona)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfiona/pseuds/semperfiona_podfic)




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